“Will you not allow that I have as much of the spirit of prophecy in me as the swans? For they, when they perceive that they must die, having sung all their life long, do then sing more than ever, rejoicing in the thought that they are about to go away to the god whose ministers they are.”
Plato, Phaedo
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Socrates 168
classical Greek Athenian philosopher -470–-399 BCRelated quotes

As quoted in the article Wangari Maathai:"You Strike The Woman ..." http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC28/Sears.htm by Priscilla Sears; published in the quarterly In Context #28 (Spring 1991)

Greenback Dollar (1963)
Context: When I was a little baby, my mama she said "Son.
Travel where you will and grow to be a man
And sing what must be sung, poor boy
Sing what must be sung."

If Thou would'st have Me sing and play.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)


On his forcible dissolution of parliament (April 1653) quoted in Flagellum: or the Life and Death Birth and Burial of Oliver Cromwell the Late Usurper (1663) by James Heath

“Swans sing before they die— 't were no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing.”
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 182.

[Thomas, Marlo, 2004, The Right Words at the Right Time, 229, Simon and Schuster, 978-0-743-44650-1]